Maria Araneta

Maria Rosario (Happy) Araneta, PhD, MPH, is Associate Dean of Diversity and Community Partnerships at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Professor of Epidemiology in the Department of Family Medicine and Public Health. She earned her BA in Biology from UCSD and her MPH and PhD in Epidemiology, with a special emphasis in Perinatal Epidemiology, from Yale University. Dr. Araneta served as perinatal epidemiologist for the UC San Diego Mother, Child and Adolescent HIV Program and as Director of Epidemiology Courses for the UCSD CREST/MAS program. She taught Applied Epidemiology to junior faculty in Ethiopia through the Medical Education Partnership Initiative and teaches research principles to UCSD medical students and doctoral students in the SDSU/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Public Health.

Dr. Araneta's research interests include maternal and pediatric HIV/AIDS, birth defects, life course exposures, ethnic health disparities in type 2 diabetes, regional fat distribution, cardiovascular disease, and metabolic abnormalities. She is Principal Investigator of the UCSD Filipino Health Study, a longitudinal study of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and osteoporosis among Filipino men and women, co-Principal Investigator of the Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study (DPPOS) at UC San Diego, and co-investigator of the Rancho Bernardo Study, leading research on ethnic health disparities among Caucasians, Filipinos, and African Americans. She contributed as co-investigator to a CDC-funded community intervention enhancing healthy dining among Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and studies assessing health advantages and disparities in reproductive outcomes by race/ethnicity and nativity. Prior research addressed birth defects and adverse reproductive outcomes among Gulf War veterans, HIV transmission through donor artificial insemination, mother-to-child HIV/AIDS transmission, and behavioral interventions including restorative yoga, active stretch, and Zumba Fitness to reduce metabolic syndrome components. Her impact is reflected in service on the NIH Council of Councils (2018-2023) and National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities Advisory Council (2015-2019), the American Diabetes Association Vivian Fonseca and Nagendran Family Diabetes Research Award (2014), Joslin Diabetes Center Inaugural Lawrence and Evelyn Wing Lectureship on Diabetes (2017), and publications such as "Prevalence of Diabetes by Race and Ethnicity in the United States, 2011-2016" (JAMA, 2019), "Sociodemographic, Clinical, and Psychosocial Predictors of Short- and Long-term Study Retention in the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) Outcomes Study (DPPOS)" (Diabetes Care, 2025), and "Long-term effects and effect heterogeneity of lifestyle and metformin interventions on type 2 diabetes incidence over 21 years in the US Diabetes Prevention Program randomised clinical trial" (Lancet Diabetes Endocrinol., 2025).

Professional Email: maraneta@health.ucsd.edu